The Tribune's classic editorial — 'As Christmas dawns'

'Forgive the merchants their commerce as you recall small noses pressed against the windowpanes of happiness, bright eyes drinking in the stuff of dreams that only children know.'

'Forgive the merchants their commerce as you recall small noses pressed against the windowpanes of happiness, bright eyes drinking in the stuff of dreams that only children know.' (Dave Nystrom, Chicago Tribune)

'What is this day, this Christmas, that dawns with a chorus of joy?'

What is this day, this Christmas, that dawns with a chorus of joy? What river of love and magic speeds the message from that moment of wonder in Bethlehem across the cold darkness of centuries long forgotten? How does it warm us this morning as we awaken in a world the Wise Men could scarcely imagine to a radiance that once each year makes it all just a little bit better?

As a republic, we cannot prostrate ourselves in religious observance. But as a people, a nation — Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, name it — we know this day, this Christmas, that dawns with a chorus of joy. And as one people, almost as one world, we now join in the celebration on the birthday of the Babe with the fervent hope that the elusive gift of peace will not slip from our grasp. We do not doubt that the day's promise is ours whether we accept the Messenger as our Prince of Peace or merely find solace and rare hope in the sure rising on one blessed day of a tide of essential goodness, a promise of the perfectibility of our most imperfect world.

This should not dilute, but strengthen, the miracle for Christians. For this day, this Christmas, belongs to us all as it dawns with a chorus of joy. Sing out the praises of Christmas, sing them in shouts and whispers. Praise the innocence of children as they stand awed before the tree, rubbing sleep and amazement from wide eyes. Praise the capacity of parents, their own innocence scraped raw by the rough edges of life, to recapture it fleetingly in this instant of observed enchantment. Praise the tolerance of grandparents for all the childish excesses in grandchildren that they scolded their own kids for each Christmas morn.

And don't try too hard to sort out whether it's fireplace smoke or tender nostalgia that tears the occasional eye in this reliving of family traditions. Christmas tears are to cherish, not to analyze.

Christmas tears are to be shed too, for those beyond the hearth. Let us open our hearts and cry for the pain of the lonely, the unloved, the deserted and the desolate; for the hungry, the homeless, the ill-clothed and the unprotected; for the uncared-for aged, the mentally and the physically ill, the addicts and alcoholics; for the victims, the abused children and adults, the battered, the helpless, the casualties of war and other crimes. Let us cry for them and for untold others.

But let us also remember that in our sadness for the pain of others is a redemption of the spirit, the Christmas joy of sharing our humanity. In our passion for the righting of all wrongs, we are but living our inheritance, the command of all religions and most philosophies in every time and place that we love one another. We are our brothers' and our sisters' keepers.

Mandel Bros. and Marshall Field's department stores drew huge crowds at holiday time, even at the start of the 1900s.

(Chicago Tribune)

Renewed in that simple knowledge, that easy act of faith in our own humanness, let us set aside the sadness, but not our deepest caring, and rejoice in the accumulated sights and sounds of the season that fill us this Christmas Day.

The bells, always the bells. Carillons rolling and street Santas shaking. The memories stirred by the gentle ching-a-ling-a-ling through soft-falling snow on darkened streets. Or the brassy caroling of a Salvation Army band. Songs, hear the songs, the old, the new, the radio marathons of Christmas tunes, the stores bathing shoppers in inspiration.

And forgive the merchants their commerce as you recall small noses pressed against the windowpanes of happiness, bright eyes drinking in the stuff of dreams that only children know. Curse the crass corruption of the season? Not with an honest heart, if you have ever known a child, or been a child. Exorcise the greed, if you will. It belongs to a grown-up world. But leave a time, this special time, for the dreams of children.

For our love of peace, for our love of each other and especially for our love of the children and our belief in their need to dream, we welcome, yes, praise, this day, this Christmas, that dawns with a chorus of joy.